Posted on 08/01/2005 10:58:13 AM PDT by wallcrawlr
The half-century campaign to eradicate any vestige of religion from public life has run its course. The backlash from a nation fed up with the A.C.L.U. kicking crèches out of municipal Christmas displays has created a new balance. State-supported universities may subsidize the activities of student religious groups. Monuments inscribed with the Ten Commandments are permitted on government grounds. The Federal Government is engaged in a major antipoverty initiative that gives money to churches. Religion is back out of the closet.
But nothing could do more to undermine this most salutary restoration than the new and gratuitous attempts to invade science, and most particularly evolution, with religion. Have we learned nothing? In Kansas, conservative school-board members are attempting to rewrite statewide standards for teaching evolution to make sure that creationism's modern stepchild, intelligent design, infiltrates the curriculum. Similar anti-Darwinian mandates are already in place in Ohio and are being fought over in 20 states. And then, as if to second the evangelical push for this tarted-up version of creationism, out of the blue appears a declaration from Christoph Cardinal Schönborn of Vienna, a man very close to the Pope, asserting that the supposed acceptance of evolution by John Paul II is mistaken. In fact, he says, the Roman Catholic Church rejects "neo-Darwinism" with the declaration that an "unguided evolutionary process--one that falls outside the bounds of divine providence--simply cannot exist."
Cannot? On what scientific evidence? Evolution is one of the most powerful and elegant theories in all of human science and the bedrock of all modern biology. Schönborn's proclamation that it cannot exist unguided--that it is driven by an intelligent designer pushing and pulling and planning and shaping the process along the way--is a perfectly legitimate statement of faith. If he and the Evangelicals just stopped there and asked that intelligent design be included in a religion curriculum, I would support them. The scandal is to teach this as science--to pretend, as does Schönborn, that his statement of faith is a defense of science. "The Catholic Church," he says, "will again defend human reason" against "scientific theories that try to explain away the appearance of design as the result of 'chance and necessity,'" which "are not scientific at all." Well, if you believe that science is reason and that reason begins with recognizing the existence of an immanent providence, then this is science. But, of course, it is not. This is faith disguised as science. Science begins not with first principles but with observation and experimentation.
In this slippery slide from "reason" to science, Schönborn is a direct descendant of the early 17th century Dutch clergyman and astronomer David Fabricius, who could not accept Johannes Kepler's discovery of elliptical planetary orbits. Why? Because the circle is so pure and perfect that reason must reject anything less. "With your ellipse," Fabricius wrote Kepler, "you abolish the circularity and uniformity of the motions, which appears to me increasingly absurd the more profoundly I think about it." No matter that, using Tycho Brahe's most exhaustive astronomical observations in history, Kepler had empirically demonstrated that the planets orbit elliptically.
This conflict between faith and science had mercifully abated over the past four centuries as each grew to permit the other its own independent sphere. What we are witnessing now is a frontier violation by the forces of religion. This new attack claims that because there are gaps in evolution, they therefore must be filled by a divine intelligent designer.
How many times do we have to rerun the Scopes "monkey trial"? There are gaps in science everywhere. Are we to fill them all with divinity? There were gaps in Newton's universe. They were ultimately filled by Einstein's revisions. There are gaps in Einstein's universe, great chasms between it and quantum theory. Perhaps they are filled by God. Perhaps not. But it is certainly not science to merely declare it so.
To teach faith as science is to undermine the very idea of science, which is the acquisition of new knowledge through hypothesis, experimentation and evidence. To teach it as science is to encourage the supercilious caricature of America as a nation in the thrall of religious authority. To teach it as science is to discredit the welcome recent advances in permitting the public expression of religion. Faith can and should be proclaimed from every mountaintop and city square. But it has no place in science class. To impose it on the teaching of evolution is not just to invite ridicule but to earn it.
You might add that Krauthammer also emphasized that that sort of thing was disappearing, what with government support of religious non-profits helping poor people etc. I don't know if I'd have agreed with him on that, but he emphasized it. Which is why your assertion that Krauthammer "hit the nail on the head" about some assault on religion surprised me.
Kinda LOOKS that way, doesn't it!
16. All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness,
17. so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.
Very interesting tagline......
Cultists do believe in some wierd stuff. The spaceship to take them home is flying behind the Hale-Bopp comet. The Koolaid will take you home to God. The universe came to exist in six days.
All wierd stuff, supported by zero evidence.
"there is a concern stemming from he recognition that it has been used in many cases to advance philosophical or social causes that violate fundamental American beliefs."
This concern seems to me to be extremely overblown. There is a paranoia to this way of thinking that is out of line with anything seen in reality.
Besides, even if true, it does not alter the scientific fact of evolution.
LOL. What we have here is a problem with fundamentalist literalist missing a metaphor.
However, every once in a while a virus's invasion plans don't function exactly as they should, and the virus's DNA (or portions of it) gets embedded into the cell's DNA in a "broken" manner.
There's them PLANS again!!!
You're probably right. I think there are many creationists that have this fear that if they let go of their fantasies then they'll be lost forever.
It's to bad they cannot have their faith and reality too. But Genesis will not let them.
Is it in the same league as Narby's now?
Elsie, I'm Dionysus, the God of wine. Come drink my wine and you will live forever.
Now you gonna believe that? So the Bible claims that all scripture is God-breathed. Well of course it claims that. Duh.
He did say that, albeit I disagree. We can't read the Bible in a positive sense in schools -- even if it is part of a personal activities day. Teachers take a chance if they teach that the Declaration of Independence means what it says about a Creator.
A judge can't put up a display of the 10 Commandments in his courtroom, although if he wanted to set aside part of it for an exhibit of cutting-edge art, I doubt a challenge on First Amendment grounds would be accepted.
Other way around, IIRC. Shemp => Curley => Curley Joe.I stand corrected, although Shemp both preceded and replaced Curely. (Shemp was replaced by Joe Besser and Curley Joe DeRita, though I am not sure of the order.)
If anyone DID, then you "E" dudes would holler, "You got no credentials!!!"
If it makes the message easier to grasp of course hey should, as long as the readers understand they are literary devices.
Are these snippets that were posted from the primary literature or from some journalist's presentation of it?
Sure. But at some point, you have to accept what's been done & build on it -- otherwise every scientist is re-inventing the wheel. And there is certainly faith across disciplines -- somebody specializing in quantum mechanics is not going to know much about botany themselves, but that doesn't mean they disbelieve what botanists say about plants until it's rigorously proven to them personally.
Argument by literary short cut placemarker.
I hate to bring it to you Elsie, but DNA is a plan. An evolved plan, just like the Avida program demonstrates at Caltech.
Sometimes it's a thousand years.
The claim that all life evolved undirected from a single cell (now actually a group of cells-- score one for the creationists) is not a scientific fact.
"Methinks thou shouldest read the Book again...."
A. It's "Methinkgs thou shouldeth readeth thine Book againe..." ( ;) )
B. Mud...clay...whatever.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.